Berkley Center

Nicole Bibbins Sedaca is the Kelly and David Pfiel Fellow at the George W. Bush Institute in the George W. Bush Presidential Center. She previously served as executive vice president and interim president at Freedom House and as a professor of the practice of international relations and concentration chair for global politics and security in the Master of Science in Foreign Service Program at the Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service. She also served for 10 years in the United States Department of State, working on democracy promotion, human rights, human trafficking, religious freedom, refugees, women's issues, and counterterrorism.

Judd Birdsall is assistant professor of the practice in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University, where he is also a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and the project director of the Transatlantic Policy Network on Religion and Diplomacy (TPNRD). In addition, he is a senior advisor on the religion and peacebuilding team at the United States Institute of Peace. From 2011 to 2020 Birdsall was based at Cambridge University, where he earned his Ph.D., founded a research center on religion and international studies, and served as an affiliated lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies. Prior to his time at Cambridge, he served in the U.S. State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom and on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. Birdsall is the editor of Religion & Diplomacy, and his work has appeared in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Guardian, Huffington Post, Christianity Today, and Religion & Politics. He is also a senior editor and a frequent contributor at the Review of Faith & International Affairs.

Galen Carey is the vice president of government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). His responsibilities include representing the NAE to government bodies, including Congress and the White House. Prior to his work as vice president, Carey was a longtime employee of World Relief, the relief and development arm of the NAE. Through this position, he served abroad in Croatia, Mozambique, Kenya, Indonesia, and Burundi. He earned a B.A. from Trinity International University, M.Div. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and a Doctor of Ministry degree from McCormick Theological Seminary.

Susan Hayward is a specialist on religion, peace, and human rights and a research fellow at the Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. From 2007 to 2021, she worked with the Religion and Inclusive Societies team at the U.S. Institute of Peace, partnering with faith-based and religious actors worldwide to transform violence and advance just peace with a particular focus on Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Colombia. In this role, she also sought to strengthen religious literacy within U.S. foreign policy and global diplomacy, partnering with the State Department, USAID, and the European Union, among others. From 2020 to 2023, Hayward supported the establishment and development of the Religion and Public Life program at Harvard Divinity School, building a graduate level certificate program for students seeking careers to advance religious literacy for just peace in vocations such as policymaking, humanitarian action, and organizing.

Peter Mandaville is a Berkley Center senior research fellow and a professor of government and politics at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, where he also serves as the director of the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center. From April 2024 to January 2025 Mandaville served as director of the Center for Faith-Based & Neighborhood Partnerships and senior advisor for faith engagement at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and from 2022 to 2024 as senior advisor on religion and inclusive societies at the United States Institute of Peace. Previous government experience includes serving as a member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Staff (2011-2012) and as a senior advisor in the department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs (2015-2016). He has also been a visiting senior fellow at the Pew Research Center. His research focuses on the intersection of religion and international affairs, with a primary focus on Islam and the Muslim world. His publications include, among others, The Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power: How States Use Religion in Foreign Policy (2023), Wahhabism and the World (2022), Islam and Politics (2014, 2020), Global Political Islam (2007), and Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma (2001). He holds degrees from the University of St. Andrews and the University of Kent and has studied at the American University in Cairo.

Katherine Marshall, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, leads the center’s work on religion and global development. She is also a professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching diverse courses on the ethics of development work and mentoring students at many levels. She helped to create and now serves as the executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, an NGO that works to enhance bridges between different sectors and institutions. In September 2022, she was appointed as a member of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Marshall has five decades of experience on a variety of development issues in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, particularly those facing the world’s poorest countries; one way she shares her expertise is through her blog Faith in Action. She was a World Bank officer from 1971 to 2006, and she led the World Bank’s faith and ethics initiative between 2000 and 2006. Marshall is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values and the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, both part of the Culture of Encounter Project.